Mr. Digby shook his head; he was too feeble to reply.
The passenger thrust his hand into his coat-pocket, and drew out what seemed a cigar-case, but what, in fact, was a leathern repertory, containing a variety of minute phials.
From one of these phials he extracted two tiny globules. “There,” said he, “open your mouth, put those on the tip of your tongue. They will lower the pulse, check the fever. Be better presently, but should not travel, want rest; you should be in bed. Aconite! Henbane! hum! Your papa is of fair complexion,—a timid character, I should say;—a horror of work, perhaps. Eh, child?”
“Sir!” faltered Helen, astonished and alarmed. Was the man a conjuror?
“A case for phosphor!” cried the passenger: “that fool Browne would have said arsenic. Don’t be persuaded to take arsenic!”
“Arsenic, sir!” echoed the mild Digby. “No: however unfortunate a man may be, I think, sir, that suicide is—tempting, perhaps, but highly criminal.”
“Suicide,” said the passenger, tranquilly,—“suicide is my hobby! You have no symptom of that kind, you say?”
“Good heavens! No, sir.”
“If ever you feel violently impelled to drown yourself, take pulsatilla; but if you feel a preference towards blowing out your brains, accompanied with weight in the limbs, loss of appetite, dry cough, and bad corns, sulphuret of antimony. Don’t forget.”
Though poor Mr. Digby confusedly thought that the gentleman was out of his mind, yet he tried politely to say “that he was much obliged, and would be sure to remember;” but his tongue failed him, and his own ideas grew perplexed. His head fell back heavily, and he sank into a silence which seemed that of sleep.